Word Association
by Spiral Loki
Summary: Fragments of Naruto and Sasuke in their progression. Written around word prompts. Naruto/Sasuke implications.


**A/N:** This was a cathartic processes I took; writing quick snippets from Naruto/Sasuke POV regarding their relationships and more, centred around word prompts. It helps me get a better grasp of their characters and writing and style varies throughout because I'm bipolar like that. Hope you enjoy it!

**Title: **Word Association  
**Genre:** Drama, Gen, Friendship, Flowery words  
**Warning: **Masturbation scene.  
**Disclaime****r:** Masashi Kishimoto's  
**Summary:**Snippets of Naruto and Sasuke in their progression. Written around word prompts. Slight spoilers. Naruto/Sasuke implications.

* * *

_**Word Association**_

**#Power**

The merit of gain is the sacrifice of exchange.

All his life he's been living this, but Naruto does not quite craft the philosophy until he's twelve, haggard, wrecked on the floor, and spitting blood from his mouth onto the floor at the mouth of a gorge, where sun infiltrates the canopy of the trees above and his skin sears red hot, as if a man is applying a blade, peeling from the inside. Comatose, motionless, four years back clarifies into his thoughts, a repressed memory of a forgotten moment:

"You are lucky," comes the phrase that passes like a breath through the lips of another. It is bitter with malice against the night's asphyxiating calm. Naruto lifts his eyes barely to meet ones that are lowered; a harrowing blank enervated face, gathered with too much desire and resentment.

"Having a force within you that gives you unlimited power forever, how easy it is for you."

In this moment he knows nothing, of the beast sealed within him, but now he looks back on it now with obtained wisdom. Knuckles, rimmed raw, curl furiously.

The forfeit of having an uncontainable power contained is the ultimate requirement of existence. He has yet to see the 'easy' and he has yet to feel the 'luck' because here there has been nothing more than years quenched from his lifespan, rushing past his eyes and crawling through his mind, years of his future foregone with the direction fate dictates.

Mastering the Kyuubi, Naruto knows will be a nearly unwieldy task, a pitiless situation and an obligation he has yet to come to terms with, but he is been bred a soldier since birth and from that power becomes his sweet nectar and mutually the executioner. Power can be cruel and most destructive of desires, robbing from cold fingers without a second of regret, where it creates god, it reigns devastation, pushing the fallen further.

He knows this because he has heard it twice before, once from the stories of his master's recollection and now, repeated in a valley too silent and a fist clenched tightly around a scratched Hitai-ate.

**# Revenge**

"Forget not the man who you take away everything, for it will fester in both of you."

Itachi, younger, a cleverly strung together line, with Sasuke standing two fetes below, eyes the size of goose eggs, wide in wonder, at the tales foretold, drawn to reveal world secrets.

This is the basis of revenge. Itachi imparts next. And this revenge will consume the burnt man.

Older now, rain torrents from the sky, mixing with the blood caked to his skin, his nails dig new wounds into his palm and Sasuke laughs mirthlessly, unapologetically about the irony.

**#Space**

Space is something Naruto first knows by calculation.

It is analysed with the consideration of time and distance, speed and duality, necessary for flawless execution and vital in keeping a shinobi's life in battle.

When Sasuke leaves, Naruto learns space is nothing that he's been taught.

It is not a measurement nor a tool, but an expanded void that is separating the two, hovering, encompassing, tearing at the seams and crushing crushing crushing his heart day by day, because it is inconsequential nothing, limitless and untouchable, a locked up secret with mysteries undivulged. Space is not solved and space does not disappear, no matter how small the distance or how long the time.

Because space is a dark gap in Sasuke's soul and that cannot be removed but only be filled.

**# Obstacle  
**  
The first time Sasuke sees the process of Orochimaru mind-body justsu it shakes him to the core, flashes him back to when he was nine years old discovering the tortured and wrecked bodies of his clan, twisted over table tops, blood seeping through the ground.

It has been four weeks since aligning with a villian he once regarded as foe, they are within an elaborate lair; lighten by dreary flickering flames. Made to stand guard, Sasuke watches the shadows run among the walls, jolting with their movement, with the sharingan turned on, he forces the kunai, raised carefully, hovering over his chest, to stop shaking; tells himself to enter the mind frame of nothing; uncaring, apathetic, without emotion.

Distorted screeches rip through the cavern, the slashing wrapping sound filling the walls, Sasuke does not move besides a minute tightened grip to his weapon. Orochimaru's smooth sickly voice is heard.

"Bring Sasuke."

Kabuto is too light on his feet, and were in not for the approaching light, Sasuke would have been an easy prey if the circumstances were different and he were still aligned with Konoha; indolent, made slack by the city walls and weak, too weak, for creatures like Kabuto.

The darkness shields half of Kabuto's leering face.

"Come," he drawls.

Automatic, Sasuke steps forward wordlessly.

Echoes follow him as he walks, and the dank lab Orochimaru uses for his own game smells repugnantly of faeces and the sour curl of piss.

"Three minutes in and our great warrior already has had an accident, that speaks greatly for Kumo's best does it not Sasuke?"

The shinobi is unidentifiable, jaw dislocated, moaning guttural pains, and eyes grey from blindness. Strapped to a raised board, his ribs hang open, muscles and vitals visible to open air, the skin of his chest brutally peeled to the side, so easily, like an unlocked window. The image spins inside Sasuke's mind and makes his gut rise to his chest, bile building to the back of his throat. Never before has he seen a man being tortured and it makes him weak to the body.

Weak.

His face remains still.

"What do you want?"

Orochimaru chuckles. "This is Kanabe, of mist country, he was fortunate enough to be born with raasati, the bloodline limit that makes you faster than you can imagine."

Sasuke leaves his voice blank.

"You are torturing him."

Orochimaru's cackle erupts in the cave. Kabuto pushes his glasses from the bridge of his noise. "I think our young Sasuke is bothered."

Sasuke does not reply.

Orochimaru gleams at him. "He is around your age, barely fourteen, I thought the two of you should acquaint," Orochimaru drags his nails softly along the shivering boys cheek. "Lovely isn't he? Nearly like you."

Sasuke narrows his eyes. "What do you want from me?"

"The last step of this procedure is to break down the mind of the body, so there are no conflicting effects if I am to overtake his body. Despite the poor control he has over his body, his mind is quite resilient…"  
The pieces click for Sasuke. "You want me to use the Sharingan, place him in a genjutsu."

Orochimaru chuckles. "You are clever, Sasuke."

Sasuke does not move.

He knows that they are all are kin now, betrayers of their homes. But a villain, he is not, as scum like Orochimaru and Kabuto have goals that are lacking of honour, for he seeks revenge to restore family honour and here he draws the distinction.

The insatiability for self-preservation mean nothing to him.

"I came here for you to give me power. Your petty work means nothing to me."

"Oh," the speed to which Orochimaru moves across the room is like a glide. He is close, cold hands slithering on Sasuke's shoulders, foul breath brushing his ear, "But let us call this your first lesson. Itachi is so very skilled at controlling another."

A wild rage flashes red through Sasuke's eyes. Hair pulls from the back of his neck, his fists tighten. That name. That vermin. He feels fury shake down his body. He closes his eyes.

All obstacles that widen the gap between him and his brother, he will obliterate.

"Finish him," Orochmaru commands.

He steps before the trembling shinobi.

The boy, ripped to the bone, is strong in built, legs and arms observably toned prior to being shredded, the unmarred patches of his skin is brown, nearly black, and eyes, an icy blue sharp, direct, penetrating, even though darkened without sight.

There is a hiate-ate strapped around his forehead.

Familiarity.

Sasuke stops.

Another boy, all too similar, measured in his unpredictability, bright, blonde, altruistic, by his side, in his head, screaming at him to stop. Stop.

Sasuke becomes frozen.

This is -

"Well what are you waiting for?"

Unwavering, forced from the throat.

Sasuke snaps to his surroundings.

"Aren't you going to finish me?"

The mangled corpse speaks, yells with unconstraint, neck protruding, stretching forward unnaturally.

"Hurry up and try break me you fool. Give me all you've got you piece of shit. What are you? Too scared? Too pathetic? Too weak?"

(_Too weak, too weak, too weak_)

There is nothing left, but thirst. The thirst for power for his revenge. There will be nothing, no one, to stop him in his path.

"Sharingan!"

**# Game  
**  
Chess is played by strategy, deception and being countless steps ahead in outsmarting your opponent.

So when Shikamaru agrees to play Naruto to a game, it makes no sense at all that the boy, who struggles with the pronunciation of the word pronunciation, has backhand knowledge on the rules of the game and does not ridiculously fail at it.

"I used to watch people play the game when I was little. Sometimes I'd pretend I had a friend who played it with me," Naruto explains, the comment, so back hand, relayed in that unexpected manner that Shikamaru can never get used to, because Naruto has always announced his life tragedies to people as if he is recounting what he had eaten for breakfast.

"Well you have one now," Shikamaru replies nonchalantly.

Naruto grins widely. "I'm going to kick your ass."

The board pieces are set up.

"White moves first," Shikamaru says.

Naruto pushes his knight forward. Shikamaru raises an eyebrow, how very Naruto and considers.

It's just; Shikamaru is one of the last to come to for comfort, and definitively last when it comes to offering. He is crass, uninterested, uncaring and speaks too much necessary truth that people rarely like to hear. But Naruto, he has always made an exception for, and he has never been too sure why. Perhaps drawn to what most usually sees as stupidity, blind naivety, but what he knows after years of observation as strength, determination and that will to never stop, never back down.

He licks his lips, mind back to the board.

They are within Naruto's house that smells expectedly of ramen and unexpectedly of spring onions. With careful deliberation, calculation among calculations running in his brain, Shikamaru observes quietly, waits for a moment, watching the pieces shift and assemble on the board, looking for an entry.

Naruto leaves his castle open.

Shikamaru attacks.

"Uchiha Sasuke has been instantly A-listed in the bingo book. Leaving Konoha, aligning himself with Orochimaru, is a crime worth punishable for death. It doesn't help that plenty can vouch for the fact that he went by his own will."

He steals the castle before glancing up at Naruto, who has frozen in his movement, flashes Shikamaru a look, before looking back down.

Naruto moves his pawn.

"That bastard doesn't know what he's doing."

"Is that so?"

"Yes," Naruto retorts instantly. "He's got issues. For someone considered the team 'genius', he sure is an idiot for believing someone like Orochimaru, eh?"

Shikamaru draws a breath. "Naruto…Sasuke knows well what he's doing."

There is a drawn out pause.

"I know."

He scrunches his fist around the edge of the table.

"I don't care what he has chosen, I will bring him back home."

Shikamaru narrows his eyes. "Isn't that up to him to decide?"

"He doesn't know what's right," Naruto snarls.

As nonchalant as he can. "It seems to me like he doesn't care what's right or wrong, only his own selfishness."

Naruto darkens immensely.

"Pay attention to the game Nara, you're losing big time."

This is a lie.

Shikamaru has already collected four of Naruto's most important pieces and on top of that has predicted his next fifteen moves, seven of which are adaptable variations, catered to the unpredictability in Naruto's strategies that more or less go by his 'gut feelings'.

But Shikamaru goes back to the board and decides to play defensively, a lieu to prolong this game with Naruto for as long as he can, waiting for another opening.

They continue in silence.

Light filters into the room covering half of the board before him, for a long drawn out moment the clock in the room ticks thunderously and only the placing of their chess pieces are heard.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Pause. No move.

Shikamaru looks up.

Quiet, whispered: "I could be exactly where he is now if it hadn't been for a bit of luck."

Naruto shakes blatantly, and Shikamaru sees it, because he has seen it more than once before, rising guilt and forlorn of something that has been lost. But there is a certain strength to the edge of Naruto's tone.

"He hasn't accepted anyone since his brother killed his whole family. No one. Who could understand him? He has been alone, suffering with his own burden that has forced him into this dark path. But do you want to know something, Shikamaru?"

Shikamaru looks up to meet determined eyes, striking and piercing in it's own resolve.

"When we were fighting at the Valley of the End, he told me I was his best friend, his closest relationship.

"I am the closest person to understand where he is coming from. The anger that he has. I am the one who can get through to him. He is my friend, my best friend, and I will pull him away from course, show him the boundless other paths he can take that are by the side of people who care for him.

"I have faith in him. I will bring him home."

In his spot, Shikamaru feels struck by the power that retains within Naruto's words. This presentation, familiar, when Naruto wishes to defy, change the scope of reality with his bare hands and for some reason, against all sound reason and logic, manages to do it.

He smiles to himself.

"Checkmate."

Naruto stares at him blankly. "Huh?"

Shikamaru points at the board. "Mah mah, I guess I'm getting rusty at this game. You've checkmated my king."

Naruto furrows his eyebrows in confusion. "I was winning..?"

"You have now," Shikamaru picks up his king and lightly chucks it towards Naruto.

He stands, in a lethargic manner, stretches his arms to the ceiling and does take his eyes off Naruto who is eyeing the King in his hands with utter confusion.

It's not a loss, because it is an early forfeit, but makes it a win, nonetheless. But it's a win for only this round.  
Shikamaru turns, leaving his opening move for next time, he says:

"You may have faith in him Naruto, but does he have faith in himself?"

**# Dreams**

Twelve and in the dead of the night Sasuke dreams of red eyes, dead, and sliced flesh, of a brother he had admired once so dearly laughing mirthlessly as he runs, legs shaking, through the empty streets of the Uchiha districts. The smell of burning at the forefront. The fear of death so close.

It is a kaleidoscope of horrors.

He is wailing, choking out begs for his life. A large shadow draws above him, dagger in hand. He screams. Unseen blades cut his body.

A wounded, horribly marred face draws close.  
"Too weak, little brother," the man whispers, "It is because you have always been lacking in hatred, Sasuke…"

And then, something sharp pierces his heart for the final time.

He feels himself drenched in the words, now falling.

(Lacking in hatred, Sasuke…)

He bottles himself up close.

(_Lacking in hatred…_)

Holds his hands to his ears.

(_Sasuke.._)

He is choking.

(_Sasuke…_)

Cannot breathe.

(_Sasuke…_)

Drowning…

"_Sasuke!_"

His eyes rip open.

Darkness surrounds him.

He calms his rugged breathing to remind himself he is inside a tent, out in the middle of mist country, miles away from Konoha, years away from that day.

Something warm gently touches his shoulder. He looks up, eyes adjusting to the night. Directly above him hovers the concerned face of Naruto, a new teammate, dead last of the class, someone familiar…

"You're crying…"

Without discretion, Naruto reaches forward and gently wipes tears spread down Sasuke's cheek. He feels himself clam up.

"Get off," Sasuke growls roughly. He pushes Naruto off, and sits up, rubbing his face.

Naruto leans back, worry knitted in his brows. "What's wrong?"

"Go back to sleep."

"Sasuke…"

"Go back to sleep urustonkachi," Sasuke orders.

"I'm just trying to-"

"Just _fuck off_," Sasuke spits.

Wind wails into the night.

"_Fine_," Naruto retorts vehemently, "bastard," he adds grouchly.

The boy loudly shifts backs into his sleeping bag.

Sasuke breathes. No one is supposed to see him like this, the least of all Naruto. He leans his face into his hands, trying to clear the buzz in inside his mind.

(_It is because you have always been lacking is hatred…_)

His heart beats into his ear like a fatalistic drum.

Thud thud thud

"Whenever I used to have a bad dream I'd remind myself of the things I liked…"

Sasuke shifts his eyes to Naruto on the ground, the back of his messy blond hair turned towards him.

"Ramen, gardening, perfecting shuriken throwing, the scent of Sakura-chan's hair…small things that remind me that I am awake and not in there…"

Sasuke grits his teeth.

"What would you know?"

Naruto vehemently turns.

"As much as you do, you bastard," he hisses; eyes determined, mouth shaped downwards, Naruto locks an unapologetic stare at Sasuke, forcing his way into Sasuke's mind, reminding Sasuke that Naruto has had his own fair share of lonely nights in a history unneeded to be told.

Sasuke glances away. "Whatever."

He lays back down, turns away from Naruto.

He doesn't want connection, he doesn't want a late night confession session, because this is his problem alone and something Naruto cannot even begin to understand.

But right now, he feels alone, stripped naked and young. Lacking in any sort of growth he thought he had made over the past years. Not a shinobi, but eight, naïve and vulnerable all over again, scraping his knees on asphalt pleading his throat dry for mercy, again and again, fear quaking in his body, bile raising to the back of his throat, threatening to vomit, release, and lose lose lose lose -

An arm is thrust against his side.

His eyes widen, heart suddenly races again.

"What are you -?"

"Shut up," a head rests on his back. "Just shut up, Sasuke."

There is silence.

**# Exhaustion**

There are two sorts of exhaustions.

One, is the feeling of accomplishment, a measure of productivity, with the body stretched to it's limits, muscles overused, hurting, aching, while lungs struggle in its use and sweat is trickling sickly down the body. Even at his peak Naruto does not stop for rest, because the familiar words of: Sasuke Sasuke Sasuke, repeat inside his head, driving him, spurring him on.

The other is of pleasure, specifically, how Naruto feels moments after he masturbates; cramped in his shower, with one hand on the tiles, supporting him, and the other in between his legs, pumping furiously at his cock. His teeth dig into his lips, refraining a guttural moan, and he breathes from his nose in shallow exhales. Water slickens the friction, and his hand moves faster, droplets sliding down his back as he shivers in pleasure.

When he is close, at his limit, images flashes through his mind and with this, he finally orgasm, semen spurting to his hand, and the never changing words, always: Sasuke Sasuke Sasuke, repeat inside his head.

**#Memory**

The curse of memory is that it is forever; haunting, restricting and encompassing.

Days go by when Sasuke is left to his own thoughts, mind running over events of his past that bury his own present.

But the thing with memory is that those forgotten, come back unrestrained, when it is least expected.

In the Land of Waves, a bridge of great fortitude towers over him in sturdy confrontation. He takes this moment to stop, tries to prevent his mind from overflowing of countless suppressed recollections, of an untroubled time and a team he is now unconsciously reconstructing. And a boy who used to challenge and still challenges all his beliefs.

Next to him, Suigetsu raises his eyebrow: "The great Naruto Bridge?"

**# Pain**

Naruto has never known true pain until the day his master dies.

This is because before, he has always been in a certain sort of camatose; aware of the instinctive yearning for warmth, but never of the coldness that sweeps when this warmth is viciously removed.

Upon this he learns something cruel:

That he has never ever ever ever even come close to knowing how Sasuke has truly felt, because it's one thing having something but another thing have it in your palms and then taken away, which he knows so well now, walking aimlessly in the shinobi grave that Jiraiya had once took him.

"This place is not only here to commemorate, but to remind us of the pain of losing a comrade. That is why we must get stronger. To protect the lives of others, so we don't ever have to feel this pain again."

"Man that sounds sort of selfish doesn't it."

"Why does that matter, when ultimately good come from it?"

And this is true, because through the years of his countless sacrifices Naruto realises that to be ultimately selfless is to be ultimately selfish. But Jiraiya's speech is flawed. Naruto knows that while pain can teach, pain can also burn a hole so deep into person's soul, relentless, caustic, destructive and unstoppable if nobody is there to teach them pain must be let go.

**#Madness  
**  
Madness is the disintegration of the mind; a reality warping, trauma striking holes in the pits of an already shredded sanity. Nothing is the same.

More and more Sasuke feels something like disgrace rushing over him, he can hear ghost whispers of his father's disappointment and the last words of his brother's, repeating like a broken record (sorry Sasuke, there won't be a next time, sorry Sasuke, there won't be a next time, sorry Sasuke, there won't be a next time). Madara's words sear through his flesh, brandish black into his heart, instructing him that for honour, Konoha must inconsequentially fall.

**#Happiness**

Here is the thing about happiness.

Alone, it is an asymptotic event, a curve stretching to a limit, unreachable and unattainable, but able to be captured only by completion with hands that are not yours.

That is:

Until he turns twelve, he does not fully become aware of happiness and how it has weaved its way quietly through fragments of his life. Happiness he has seen and only achieved through emulation, a farcical fabrication that covers the missing within him.

But it comes to him; head first, when he is out on another futile mission in the border of tea country sent to recollect said to be stolen but really recklessly lost sheep. Team Seven settle along a stream where the grass is worn down enough to set up camp, but covered sufficiently to conceal their whereabouts. He and Sasuke are both sent out to collect firewood midway through a passionate disagreement on whose turn it is to collect firewood. Stubborn in their thoughts the two end up knee deep in water instead, battling it out on who can catch the largest fish. Naruto manages to capture a trout, until Sasuke uses katon and boils the water. Dead fish float to the surface. Unimpressed, Naruto slides and cuts Sasuke's footing on the slippery rocks before losing his own balance. The two fall ungracefully into the stream.

Wood is safely unforgotten by the river bank.

On land, the two lie down, half wet, drying out and lull into a comfortable silence with their feet dangling in the water, crickets buzzing erratically around them. Something within Naruto swells tenfolds, a feeling he cannot properly explain.

"This is nice," Naruto offers quietly, a fleeting thought that passes through his lips. And without a hint of malice or condensation he hears Sasuke give a sound of concurrence.

A pause, repeated and played over and over in the future, occurs, where Sasuke lowers his head and regards him briefly with a queer sort of affection that Naruto has never seen before. Then he does something remarkable. An unsaid acknowledgement that passes between the two of them, speaking more than words could ever.

He smiles.

A small, yet noticeable curve of the mouth.

It is here the sun is merging into the horizon, spreading a mustard orange across the sky, this instant, this portion, this passing moment is something of fixated awe, where he feels a drumming sense of urgency to capture this moment and bury it deep within him, never to let it go because this is just it, completion, fulfilment, a spreading contentment that is filling Naruto's heart and spreading to the tips of his fingers.

"Let's go back, Naruto," Sasuke murmurs.

Naruto nods, lifts his head to the sky and smiles infinitely.

**# Destiny  
**  
Destiny walks in pairs of narrow intertwining paths, so interlocked with the world of oppositions, a validation of existence. For there is no right without wrong, no success without defeat, no light without darkness and no love without hate; only an interplay, soon to be tipped, when the fallible is revealed and the successor conquests.

But destiny reins no certain judgement, impartial in its virtue, only sees what is to come when the two draw closer and inevitably meet.

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Reviews are appreciated, tell me which word was your favourite :)


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